One of Italy’s most-feared Mafias reveal how they recruit baby-faced children

Young and fearless, four boys walk around a rundown estate on the outskirts of Naples. 

Teenagers Hernesto, Alfredo, Gennaro and Manu* are members of what the authorities call a ‘baby gang’. These so-called gangs terrorise Italian cities, robbing people, committing violent attacks and drug dealing. 

The four boys live in the infamous suburb of Le Vele di Scampia, Naples, and work with mafia-style criminal organisation, the Camorra, which is based in the city. 

The Camorra, one of the oldest and largest criminal institutions in the world, is known for recruiting children for its drug and crime operations, working in individual clans.

Many baby gang members struggle to read and write and are under educated, leaving school in the equivalent of Year 6.

Speaking to Italian journalist Alessia Camoirano Bruges in a recent VICE documentary, one Camorra member said of recruiting children in Naples: ‘We test them. We ask them to kill someone. 

‘If they do it, great. If not, we kill them instead.’

It comes as things change in the Camorra, with the traditional rule of omertà (silence) about criminal and illegal activities switching to ‘stunting’ and boasting on social media.

Camorra members now post their rich and lavish lifestyles online and encourage youngsters like the four boys to join their ranks. 

One, Crescenzo Marino, the son of a Camorra boss, has more than 43,000 followers and nearly 900,000 likes on TikTok.

On his TikTok account, he flaunts designer clothing and watches, cruising around Paris in a Ferrari, playing with pitbulls and meeting well-known rappers.

Nowadays, some of the teens recruited are 12 or 13, and ask to be part of the mafia-style group.

In the present day, Alessia spoke to current Camorra members and the baby gang boys for the Vice documentary after travelling to Le Vele Scampia and Parco Verde.

Statistics showed that as of April 2020, according to figures released by the senate, unemployment affected more than 12 per cent of the Naples population.

Le Vele Scampia and Parco Verde are two of the biggest areas for organised crime and drug dealing. 

Hernesto, Alfredo, Gennaro and Manu live in Le Vele Scampia. Many children there grow up in suffering and teens are drawn into gang life. 

One told Alessia: ‘Growing up in Le Vele is great because here you really understand what life is about. If you’re Le Vele and we grew up together, I’ll always be here for you.

‘We’re a family. But what brings us to make mistakes is that we grew up in suffering. We’ve seen deaths, drugs, hunger, our families destroyed due to lack of jobs.’

As baby gang members get older, they often move from petty crime into selling drugs, buying them from the Camorra or working for them. Hernesto, Alfredo, Gennaro and Manu work for the Camorra and sell drugs, making us much as one or two thousand euros a day. 

They showed Alessia how the drugs operation works. Passing through a gate installed by the Camorra, they led her through to a drug house – which appeared like any other normal dwelling and played host to a mother and child.

Amazingly, the gang, watched closely by members of the Camorra, then expertly divided up 700g of white powder live on camera, telling Alessia that if they lose the drugs they will not make it home tonight. 

The group described the drugs as a ‘game’ to Alessia and told her that they got into it through ‘looking around.’ 

On selling them, they said: ‘If we’re selling drugs, it’s because we want to build a future and help our family to bring the bread home. We’re forced to do it because there are no jobs. There is nothing. We have drugs.

‘That’s what we do. That’s our life. That’s why our hearts turned cold. A round of applause for us.’

As the boys continued to sit at the table with the journalist, she noticed that they had a gun. 

Asking how they got it, they told her they had bought it themselves. Shocked by their admission, Alessia asked if they had used it and was told that they had, quite often.

One of the boys said: ‘It’s like this, once you’ve drawn the gun, I mean you cant go back. You shoot or you shoot. 

‘Otherwise, why would you draw it in the first place?’ If you hurt me, I take this and I hurt you even more badly. You hurt me with your words, I hurt you with this.’

Afterwards, the Camorra bosses seized their chance to speak to Alessia about the business, explaining that drug dealing was the most lucrative for them. 

Astonishingly, the criminals can make up to 80,000 euros a day, depending on the numbers of drugs they sell. Their drug dealing can make them more than 7 billion euros per year. 

They told Alessia that if the teens they recruit want to be in the Camorra, they will not stop them as it makes things easier for them.

A baby gang member said: ‘They have to get the measure of you if you want to be a Camorrista. You need to be valued as a person, someone who has progressed against the odds since childhood. 

‘You have to do as you’re commanded. If the camorra asked me to kill someone, I’d do it. Because if you don’t, they kill you instead.’

Now, the power of social media means that the camorra show their strength to thousands of people and members of the public ‘have to fear them.’ 

One alleged senior Camorra member from an influential family told Alessia that they use the networks to ‘inspire’ young people. They explained that if they post something on social media and a comment is left by a young person, they will reply to them. 

Later, Alessia visited a pool bar which is allegedly run by the Camorra with the four boys. In areas such as Le Vele Scampia and Parco Verde, leisure activities for children and teens are limited. 

Giving Alessia a glimpse into their lifestyle, the teens in the gang explained that they play football and pool in their free time. 

All four boys admitted to Alessia that they also often go looking for trouble and had been out late the night before doing just that. 

One told her: ‘We did robberies- cars, mopeds- easy money. You can get up to £1,500.

‘In one or two days you can bring home 2000 euros without doing sh** and you can buy whatever you want.’

The boy said that ‘sooner or later’ the whole group will get caught and risk three to four years in jail but as soon as they get out they will make ‘twice as much money.’  

None of the group fear anything, remarkable given the dangerous lifestyle they lead.

One said: ‘We’re not afraid of anything, even death. We know the consequences. That’s the thing, we aren’t afraid of anything. At 12, 13 years old I did my first robbery. I was with my friends and I only have my father. I lost my mother four years ago to a disease. I’m living with my aunt now. We did it because we were in a bad place.’

The boys are following in the footsteps of prolific Camorra bosses who have died or been jailed following their criminal activities.

This includes Paolo Di Lauro, leader of the Di Lauro clan, who has been imprisoned since 2005.

Di Lauro, now 89, from the Secondigiliano neighbourhood, had worked under Camorra boss Aniello La Monica for years and was at a meeting of mafiosi in the early 1980s.

He was one of the funeral attendees after La Monica was murdered in 1982, with the shopkeepers of  Secondigliano hauling down their shutters as a sign of respect. 

Although it is claimed that he was implicated in his boss’s murder, Di Lauro mourned him.  

Di Lauro was head of a tightly-run drug empire until he was jailed for 30 years in 2005 for drug trafficking.  

Another Camorra boss, Raffaele ‘the Professor’ Cutolo, 79, was found dead last year in prison, after spending the last 42 years of life in jail.

He ran a criminal empire from jail, establishing the headquarters of the ‘New Camorra’ in the 1970s and orchestrating a bloody war against the Sicilian Cosa Nostra in the 1980s. 

The crime overlord commanded a legion of 10,000 men who smuggled cocaine and ran protection rackets, fathered a child by IVF and was the inspiration for a 1986 movie starring Ben Gazzara.

This all happened while he was in prison serving multiple life sentences. Once, he sat at the table with top politicians as he was asked to negotiate the release of President of Campania, Ciro Cirillo, who was abducted by the Red Brigades, Communist guerrillas, in 1981. 

‘Cutolo was a piece of the Italian state,’ Gomorrah writer and author, Roberto Saviano said. ‘He was very powerful, more than a prime minister.’ 

In 1964, 22-year-old Cutolo was jailed for murdering a man who had made a pass at his sister.

He was sent to Naples’ Poggioreale prison, infamous for its torture chamber, where he was challenged early in his 24-year stint by Camorra don Antonio ‘the Badman’ Spavone.

The young Cutolo asked Spavone to arm himself with a flick knife and meet him in the courtyard.

But the boss never showed and from that day on Cutolo was feared throughout the jail.

Another famous mafia boss, the first female crime head, Assunta Maresca, died last year after a short illness.

She killed for the first time when she was 18 years old and six months pregnant, gunning down Antonio Esposito, a former crime partner of her husband Pasquale Simonetti. 

Pasquale had turned against him and hired Carlo Gaetano Orlando, a small-time member of his entourage, to kill the newlywed in the busy Piazza Mercato in Naples.

But Maresca, the daughter of notorious Camorra member Vincenzo Maresca, decided to exact revenge on the crime boss herself, believing the police would turn a blind eye.

She tracked down Esposito in broad daylight and shot him dead with a Smith & Wesson .38. 

She was jailed for 18 years and defiantly said in court during her murder trial in 1959, ‘I would do it again!’, prompting the courtroom to erupt with cheers.

The sentence was later reduced to 13 years and four months but she was pardoned after ten years. 

Her Mafia boss father profited from illegal cigarettes. The Maresca family was known as the Lampetielli, the lightning knives, for their use of switchblades.

She later gave birth in prison to Pasqualino and continued to be involved in criminal activities after her release.

Later, she became a lover to another Camorra boss, Umberto Ammaturo, and they had twins while she supported his drugs and arms enterprise.

Her infamous life was the subject of a film that she starred in. While she opened two clothes shops, she could not escape a life of crime.  

Her eldest son Pasqualino had Camorra ambitions himself before he disappeared aged 18, after meeting Ammaturo on a construction site.

Maresca’s new partner was jealous of Pasqualino and she believes he had the teenager murdered before burying him in cement.

Despite strongly suspecting her new lover of murdering her son, she stuck by his side to help raise their twins.

He has always denied killing Pasqualino.

In modern-day Italy, the criminal activities of the Camorra and the baby gangs have had a huge impact on the Le Vele di Scampia community- with huge numbers addicted to drugs.

Speaking to one person who was buying crack from the dealers, he explained that he had started doing drugs at the age of 12. He told Alessia: ‘Here in the suburbs of Naples, drugs are just something that’s there as you leave the house. 

He told her that he got into drugs because he was on a car ride with a friend and they decided to do something different. They said that at first it seemed like a good idea but it gradually became his life and he now cannot do anything without it.   

Alessia also visited Parco Verde, where the majority of the Camorra have now moved. It is the biggest drug dealing area. 

In Parco Verde, an ex-Camorra member, Bruno Mazza, now runs a charity and tries to help children avoid drugs and being sucked into the gang. 

He tries to reclaim Camorra premises and turn them into places for the community, including a community kitchen. But he is not always successful.

One leisure centre which was specifically built for teens has been overtaken by drug users. It means that the premises is overrun by heroin syringes and bottles as well as cocaine. 

Bruno told Alessia: ‘This is the state’s doing. But even the camorra does its part. The corrupted part of the state does business with their entrepreneur friends.

‘But the thing is, you cannot trust any given entrepreneur because they are maybe friends with the camorra. 

‘Obviously, where else is the 1,800,000 euros that was to be invested in here? They’ve taken all the manholes too- They sell them as scrap metal. They’ve even taken the electricity.’

Then, Alessia asked him about his life in the Camorra. Bruno told her that he felt protected when the boss asked him to work for him.

He explained that when he was a kid, the boss had given him what he could not have with his own son and loved him as if he was his own.

Bruno added: ‘I believed that. He sort of won me over with the charm of an easy motorbike, the easy clothes. 

‘Nowadays, the Camorra uses younger kids because they believe they have a courage that adults no longer have. If there are no jobs or work for young people in Parco Verde or Scampia, then you can do whatever you want, even arrest them and put them in jail for 300 euros a day.

‘What do you do then? They get out of jail and start committing crimes again. Without these kids, the camorra is no more.’

Afterwards, talking about the realities of Parco Verde, Bruno said that forty kids sadly died in Parco Verde. Their deaths were due to shootings or because of drugs. 

‘This means that we should do something for these kids. We lack everything. Unemployment is what fuels crime. As long as there is unemployment, the camorra will be there,’ Bruno said.

Alessia ended her visits to Parco Verde and Le Vele by speaking to the 13-year-old youngest member of the baby gang about how he ended up there, concerned that something was worrying him as he had not talked much during her earlier chat with the four boys. 

He reassured her that he prefers listening to speaking. When asked about possibilities for kids at Le Vele, he said: ‘I don’t know. Here at Scampia, we feel left out.’ 

He told Alessia that his father is a greengrocer and his mother is a housewife. Admitting that his parents sometimes wonder where he gets his money from, he said sometimes he tells them the truth and sometimes lies. 

But he did not want to speak on the subject of opening up to them, shaking his head when asked if they could help him out too.  He admitted that his parents are worried he might get involved with the camorra.

He said: ‘I would like to be a camorrista. If I were to become one I’d be happy. Because I’d become someone. Someone that is known by everyone.’ 

Rounding off the documentary, Alessia admitted that she was terrified to come to Le Vele and Parco Verde, unsure of what she would find. But she said: ‘I realised actually there’s no bad kids. Just awful circumstances.’ 

*names have been changed to protect their identity